06.29.10

Provincetown [Massachusetts] school officials have approved providing condoms to children as young as kindergarten age. Fox News Channel quoted the school superintendent, who justified the new policy with the argument that “children engage in sexuality with or without counseling, with or without condom availability.”

But Concerned Women for America CEO Penny Nance believes it is nonsensical — and when told that a child requesting a condom would receive counseling in how to use it, she responded:

“You know, this is just the worst kind of example of schools jumping over the parent-child relationship and getting in between the parent-child relationship,” Nance laments, “and it absolutely makes no sense.”

Penny Nance (CWA)According to the CWFA spokeswoman it also opens the door for a child who is being sexually abused to be sent to request a condom, told by a nurse or counselor how to use it, and sent on their way to be abused again. She believes school officials ought to know that if a five-year-old child asks for a condom, there could be abuse going on.

“And it really just explains how out of step the political correctness of our country has gone,” adds Nance.

Parents cannot opt their children out of the program, which will go into effect at the beginning of the new school year; and if a child asks for a condom, their parents will not be notified. The case has created quite a storm — even the governor of Massachusetts is now asking that a second look be taken at the policy.

For a very long time, I’ve noticed something very strange happening on the racism front. The problem has become so acute that it’s obvious the devil has retooled and fully implemented a new plan of operation.

Racism has been a plague on humanity for thousands of years. Ever since man rebelled against God at the Tower of Babel and He divided people into separate groups, we have had racial strife. You can just look at the history of the Jews and see one of racism’s longest track records.

It took us several decades to arrive at this point, but we are now at the stage that racism is being used in a new way to destroy people. We are seeing total moral breakdown in various minority communities. The situation is so bad that if the same levels of drug abuse, crime, and depravity were seen in the general population, our nation would collapse.

Today, alcoholism is the number-one problem among Native Americans. The suicide rate for Alaskan tribes is four times more than the national average, and almost 80 percent of all deaths in that race are related to alcohol abuse or alcoholism. I once visited the Winnebago tribe in North Nebraska and found it to be one of the most depressing places I’ve ever visited. There were nothing but bars in one community, and everyone walked around like zombies there.

In the black community, there is a huge problem with crime, drugs, and single parenthood. The murder rate in some cities has exploded in recent years. Young black males are killing each other at a rate of 36.36 per hundred thousand–nearly seven times the national overall homicide rate of 5.30 per hundred thousand. Just this past week, a crime wave swept Chicago, with ten dead among fifty-four wounded.

The clearest indication of a demonic plot is how the media has covered up this issue. It’s like if the Ku Klux Klan decided it wasn’t making any progress and chose to take over the press. Various groups are destroying themselves, and the media is almost completely silent about the matter.

A growing mountain of evidence shows that the media is suppressing any negative behavior issues in the minority communities. Even in cases of armed robbery, in which the race of a suspect is helpful in identifying the perpetrator, the liberal media often withholds this information. Of course, if the criminal is a white male in his twenties, news organizations have no problem releasing that information.

In one case, a news station reported that a robbery suspect was a young male who was “either white or Hispanic.” Even though the reporter knew he was Hispanic, the story mentioned both races–seemingly for no logical reason.

The politically correct movement has had a genocidal impact on various racial groups. The welfare state has destroyed moral fabric of whole communities. The 90-percent alcoholism rate for Native Americans was once much lower than that. As recent as the 1950s, some tribes viewed booze as a curse exclusive to whites. Before the advent of the “Great Society,” blacks had strong family ties. Today, most blacks are raised in single-parent homes.

I was once listening to speech by Lloyd Marcus, a black leader of the Tea Party movement. He gives wonderful insight into the destructive nature of the new racism. He said that, as a child, he was brainwashed into believing white people were the source of the problem in the black community. But even as a youth, he could see that government dependency was the true source of the problem. He thanked his father for saving his life by moving his family out of the projects.

“Several of my cousins were not as fortunate,” he said. “They grew up in fatherless homes and [were] on government welfare most of their lives. [The] government provided just enough to keep them dependent. A hand up is a good thing. But, government controlling people via cradle-to-grave dependency is evil. My cousin’s lives sucked: drug and alcohol abuse, crime, serial out-of-wedlock births, etc. Many died young.”

All types of evil are now moving forward under sweet-sounding names like “multiculturism” and “tolerance.” Islam has made amazing inroads into the Western world despite its track record of being the source of numerous terrorist attacks. The green light has just been given for the construction of a “mega mosque” next to New York City’s Ground Zero. The Cordoba House will be a fifteen-story facility project leaders claim will promote tolerance and serve as a platform for people of all backgrounds to come together. It would insane enough to allow a mosque in the same area where we’re still finding bodies from the 9/11 attack, but the real craziness is the fact that there is no quid pro quo by allowing the construction of a church in the Muslim world. There would be rioting in the streets of Mecca if Christians were given the okay to construct a place of worship in that city.

The reason we have so much racial insanity is that people are afraid to stand for the truth. One of the worst things that could happen to us today is being called a “racist.” The day is coming when we will be labeled as racists for simply claiming to be Christians. If believers could look down the road and see what the devil has planned for us, they would be far more aggressive in fighting for truth.

06.28.10

Obama is determined to bring down the wrath of God on the U.S. through his treatment of Israel. Pray that he is not successful.

The sobering assessment comes a week before Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, meets President Barack Obama at the White House.

There had been hope the two could lay to rest a row that erupted between the two allies in March but the new comments have raised fears of long-term damage.

Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, told foreign ministry colleagues at a private briefing in Jerusalem that they were facing a long and potentially irrevocable estrangement.

Sources said Mr Oren told the meeting: “There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs. [Instead] relations are in a state of tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart.”

Although the main stream media would love of us to believe otherwise, the country still continues to be middle of the road with conservative leanings.
With that in mind, Obama’s dismal approval rating is no surprise.

A conservative university professor and political scientist thinks no one should be surprised by the new poll results showing that Americans are less confident in President Obama’s leadership than at any point since he took office almost 18 months ago.

The Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 62 percent of surveyed adults feel the country is on the wrong track, which is the highest level reported since before the 2008 election. The survey also showed that for the first time, more people disapprove of the president’s performance than those who approve. That includes 17 percent of disapproving Democrats, which is also the highest level for Obama’s presidency.

Another telling statistic reveals that just 44 percent of those who supported Obama in 2008 now express a high interest in the midterm elections — a 38-percent drop from two years ago. In contrast, 71 percent of voters who supported John McCain in 2008 express high interest in the midterms, which is slightly higher than their anticipation level at this stage of the 2008 campaign.

06.25.10

This is yet another example of the intolerant and deadly nature of Islam. They are anything but peaceful.

A group of Afghan Christians living in exile in India have issued an “urgent” plea to the international community to help Christians still living in Afghanistan following the recent call for their execution by a government minister.

The letter was issued earlier in the month by a community of 150 Afghan converts now living as refugees in New Delhi because of the threat to their lives in Afghanistan.

In the letter they urge Christians around the world to speak out against the “egregious injustices” and “blatant human rights violations” taking place against Christians in Afghanistan.

“We left our country because we were sentenced to death on the account of our Christian faith … Christians are called pagans and infidels and are sentenced to death by the Afghan Government. Death penalty is waiting for all those who want to leave the darkness and come to true light, repent from their sins, and put their faith on (sic) the Lord Jesus Christ,” they wrote.

The letter is a response to the riots and demonstrations that broke out in Afghanistan last month, after the independent channel Noorin TV aired a documentary revealing the names and faces of supposed Afghan Christian converts.

Protesters called on President Hamid Karzai to arrest and execute the converts and the deputy secretary of the Afghan Parliament’s Lower House, Abdul Sattar Khawasi, made his own call for the execution of Christian converts from Islam.

The group goes on to say that they have received reports of Afghan Christians being arrested and having their homes and businesses searched in recent weeks. There have also been reports that authorities are torturing arrested Christians to force them to reveal the names of other Christian converts and the location of underground churches and fellowships.

They stated: “In light of all these events, and the perplexing media silence on these atrocities occurring in plain view of the international community, we are pleading with the Body of Christ around the world to support our Afghan Christian brothers and sisters during this critical time by taking a firm and vocal stand against the severe and devastating wrongs being committed against them by their own government!”

The execution call came just days after two Christian aid groups were suspended after authorities accused them of proselytizing. Church World Service and Norwegian Church Aid cannot operate while authorities investigate the claim. Both ministries deny any wrongdoing.

Gail Gartrell, the Great-Aunt to Sarah and Amina Said, and she is still receiving death threats concerning her speaking out against the “honor” killing deaths of her great nieces. She was interviewed on CBS Dallas affiliate KTVT last night.

Cleburne Police are increasing security around the home of an outspoken relative of two sisters who were shot to death on New Year’s Day of 2008.

Egyptians Amina and Sarah Said were allegedly killed by their father, Yaser Abdel Said, in his taxicab, as captured by a chilling 911 call to Irving police. Their great aunt, Gail Gartrell, is the renewed target of death threats that she believes are coming from overseas.

“It was basically a ‘fatwah,'” she said. “In our lingo, a ‘hit.'”

And for a time, an edited photo was uploaded on the social networking website Myspace for the world to see.

“It was a still of this frame of me, and then behind me is this guy in jihad gear, or wear, and he has a gun pointed right at my head,” she said. “And so the threats begin again. And now they’re popping up in different places.”

The message is blunt – Gartrell reports obscene messages saying such things as “See you in hell, b—h” — and it has caused Gartrell to turn to the FBI and Cleburne Police for assistance.

“I get a lot of death threats,” she said. “It’s angering me; they’re bullies. And as an American citizen, I didn’t think I had to put up with this kind of thing.”

The threats began shortly after the Said girls’ funeral, wherein she said she termed the murders “honor killings.” Early on, she received hundreds of threatening calls and emails mostly, she said, from the girls’ older brother.

But she’s stayed out of the spotlight as of late while taking care of a family member who is in hospice care. And then the Myspace threat appeared which prompted her to get authorities involved.

“Obviously, that just upped the concern for her safety,” said Terry Powell, Cleburne police chief. “[Threats] do lend themselves to being believable and serious in nature, so whatever she would need in the city we would be glad to provide that for her.”

Patrol officers now regularly check in on the Gartrell home. The department also notified detectives in the Criminal Investigative Division.

However, the Saids’ mother Patricia Owens said she talked to her son, whom Gartrell believes is making the threats in Egypt, and said the allegations are incorrect. She calls Gartrell’s claims ridiculous and said she believes the focus should be on finding justice for her daughters.
Instead of the patrol cars circling Gartrell’s home, Owens said they should be working to find her ex-husband. But Gartrell has a different theory on his whereabouts.

“I think [Yasser] has kept his murdering a—here the whole time,” she said. “I think he is that bold.”

The Dallas FBI only said they would arrest Yaser if he can be located, as he is a fugitive from justice. The bureau will not confirm if the brother is also being sought in connection with the death threats.

Irving police are handling the murder investigation and say Yaser is the only person wanted in that case.

06.24.10

It’s all too predictable. A day after a gunman killed six people and wounded 18 others at Northern Illinois University, The New York Times criticized the U.S. Interior Department for preparing to rethink its ban on guns in national parks.

The editorial board wants “the 51 senators who like the thought of guns in the parks — and everywhere else, it seems — to realize that the innocence of Americans is better protected by carefully controlling guns than it is by arming everyone to the teeth.”

As usual, the Times editors seem unaware of how silly their argument is. To them, the choice is between “carefully controlling guns” and “arming everyone to the teeth.” But no one favors “arming everyone to the teeth” (whatever that means). Instead, gun advocates favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone wishes to be prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so. No one has the right to deprive others of the means of effective self-defense, like a handgun.

As for the first option, “carefully controlling guns,” how many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized.

While they search for — excuse me — their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.

That’s because laws that make it difficult or impossible to carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws against self-defense.

Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize their own, not their victims’, success. So criminals don’t attack people they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls.

Government may promise to protect us from criminals, but it cannot deliver on that promise. This was neatly summed up in book title a few years ago: “Dial 911 and Die.” If you are the target of a crime, only one other person besides the criminal is sure to be on the scene: you. There is no good substitute for self-responsibility.

How, then, does it make sense to create mandatory gun-free zones, which in reality are free-crime zones?

The usual suspects keep calling for more gun control laws. But this idea that gun control is crime control is just a myth. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed dozens of studies and could not find a single gun regulation that clearly led to reduced violent crime or murder. When Washington, D.C., passed its tough handgun ban years ago, gun violence rose.

The press ignores the fact that often guns save lives.

It’s what happened in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law. Hearing shots, two students went to their cars, got their guns and restrained the shooter until police arrested him.

Likewise, law professor Glen Reynolds writes, “Pearl, Miss., school shooter Luke Woodham was stopped when the school’s vice principal took a .45 from his truck and ran to the scene. In (last) February’s Utah mall shooting, it was an off-duty police officer who happened to be on the scene and carrying a gun”.

It’s impossible to know exactly how often guns stop criminals. Would-be victims don’t usually report crimes that don’t happen. But people use guns in self-defense every day. The Cato Institute’s Tom Palmer says just showing his gun to muggers once saved his life.

06.23.10

The gathering storm in the Middle East is gaining momentum. War clouds are on the horizon and, as with conditions prior to World War I, all it takes for explosive action to commence is a trigger.

Turkey’s provocative flotilla—often described in Orwellian terms as a humanitarian mission—has set in motion a flurry of diplomatic activity, but if the Iranians send escort vessels for the next round of Turkish ships, it could present a casus belli.

It is also instructive that Syria is playing a dangerous game with both missile deployment and rearming Hezbollah. According to most public accounts, Hezbollah is sitting on 40,000 long-, medium- and short-range missiles and Syrian territory has served as a conduit for military material from Iran since the end of the 2006 Lebanon War.

Should Syria move its own scuds to Lebanon or deploy its troops as reinforcement for Hezbollah, a wider regional war with Israel could not be contained.

In the backdrop is an Iran with sufficient fissionable material to produce a couple of nuclear weapons. It will take some time to weaponize missiles, but the road to that goal is synchronized in green lights, since neither diplomacy nor diluted sanctions can convince Iran to change course.

Iran is poised to be the hegemon in the Middle East. It is increasingly considered the “strong horse,” as American forces incrementally retreat from the region. Even Iraq, ironically, may depend on Iranian ties in order to maintain internal stability. From Qatar to Afghanistan, all political eyes are on Iran.

For Sunni nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, regional strategic vision is a combination of deal-making to offset the Iranian Shia advantage and attempting to buy or develop nuclear weapons as a counterweight to Iranian ambition. However, both of these governments are in a precarious state.

Should either fall, all bets are off in the Middle East neighborhood. It has long been said that the Sunni “tent” must stand on two legs, if one, falls, the tent collapses.

Should that tent collapse and should Iran take advantage of that calamity, it could incite a Sunni-Shia war. Or feeling its oats and no longer dissuaded by an escalation scenario with nuclear weapons in tow, war against Israel is a distinct possibility. However implausible it may seem at the moment, the possible annihilation of Israel and the prospect of a second Holocaust could lead to a nuclear exchange.

The only wild card that can change this slide into warfare is an active United States policy. Yet curiously, the U.S. is engaged in both an emotional and physical retreat from the region. Despite rhetoric that suggests an Iran with nuclear weapons is intolerable, that rhetoric has done nothing to forestall that eventual outcome. Despite the investment in blood and treasure to allow a stable government to emerge in Iraq, the anticipated withdrawal of U.S. forces has prompted President Maliki to travel to Tehran on a regular basis. And despite historic links to Israel that gave the U.S. leverage in the region and a democratic ally, the Obama Administration treats Israel as a national-security albatross that must be disposed of as soon as possible.

As a consequence, the U.S. is perceived in the region as the “weak horse,” the one that is dangerous to ride. In every Middle East capital the words “unreliable and United States” are linked. Those seeking a moderate course of action are now in a distinct minority. A political vacuum is emerging, one that is not sustainable and one the Iranian leadership looks to with imperial exhilaration.

It is no longer a question of whether war will occur, but rather when it will occur and where it will break out. There are many triggers for igniting the explosion, but not many scenarios for containment. Could it be a regional war in which Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch from the sidelines, but secretly wish for Israeli victory? Or is this a war in which there aren’t victors, only devastation? Moreover, should war break out, what does the U.S. do?

This is a description far more dire than any in the last century and, even if some believe my view is overly pessimistic, Arab and Jew, Persian and Egyptian, Muslim and Maronite tend to believe in its veracity. That is a truly bad sign.

Dr. London is president of the Hudson Institute, John M. Olin Professor of Humanities at New York University, publisher of American Outlook, and author of the recently published Decade of Denial.

You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only Democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies. You have done just the opposite. You have propagandized Israel, until they look like they are everyone’s enemy — and it has resonated throughout the world. You are putting Israel in harm’s way, and you have promoted anti-Semitism throughout the world.

You have brought this to a people who have given the world the Ten Commandments and most laws we live by today. The Jewish people have given the world our greatest scientists and philosophers, and the cures for many diseases, and now you play a very dangerous game so you can look like a true martyr to what you see and say are the underdogs. But the underdogs you defend are murderers and criminals who want Israel eradicated.

You have brought to Arizona a civil war, once again defending the criminals and illegals, creating a meltdown for good, loyal, law-abiding citizens. Your destruction of this country may never be remedied, and we may never recover. I pray to God you stop, and I hope the people in this great country realize your agenda is not for the betterment of mankind, but for the betterment of your politics.

Fundamentalist Christianity could be defined as a movement stressing the need for Christians to interpret the words of the Bible literally and to adhere to them to the very best of one’s human ability.

It goes without saying that, in our politically correct, ‘anything goes’ world, taking the Bible literally and living one’s life accordingly doesn’t make one popular with a host of people these days, some of whom claim to hold a kinship with Christians. Recently, for example, the Vatican ‘took on’ Christian Fundamentalists, as seen in the opening paragraphs of a Fox News story:

It’s not easy walking through the minefield called Middle Eastern politics, and a Vatican document released Sunday managed to criticize Israel, Egypt, Islam and even Christian fundamentalists.

The 46-page text, “The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness,” will serve as a working document for an October meeting at the Vatican about the Mideast.

The document was made public Sunday, the final day of Pope Benedict’s visit to the island of Cyprus, and reflected the Church’s concern about the flight of Christians from the Holy Land as they leave to look for more opportunities and fewer problems elsewhere.

Many Evangelical Christians, especially Americans, have thrown their total and unwavering support behind the Jewish state in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those of us who take the Word of God literally, the Vatican would have us to believe, are encouraging Israel’s “occupation” of lands that we happen to know belong to none other than Israel! It’s a funny thing how reading one’s Bible can teach you things like that. Perhaps those at the Vatican criticizing those of us who actually do so should try reading their Bibles.

Genesis 15:18:

In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites,

And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims,

And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

One need do but a small amount of research to determine that present-day Israel isn’t “occupying” even one inch of soil that doesn’t belong to the descendants of Abraham – if you believe the teachings of the Bible which the Vatican, apparently, chooses not to do.

Just look at all the trouble the Vatican says fundamentalist Christians are causing by believing in God’s Word! By offering our unwavering support of the apple of God’s eye (Zechariah 2:8), namely Israel, in its ongoing struggle against those who want nothing less than to destroy it, we’re creating difficulties in the “everyday lives” of Palestinians. What a sad tale and a tall one it is at that!

Literally thousands of rocket and mortar attacks have been launched against civilian targets in Israel from Gaza in recent years, but steel and shrapnel raining out of the sky inside the borders of Israel? None of them, from the Vatican’s perspective, impacts the “everyday lives” of Israelis. And how cruel it is that fundamentalist Christians aren’t up in arms that Palestinians aren’t permitted more “freedom of movement” by the Israelis. Who knows? If the Palestinians and the terrorist factions they harbor could’ve moved around more freely they could’ve potentially launched hundreds of thousands of rocket and mortar attacks against civilian targets in Israel! Yes, the Vatican thinks Israel and fundamentalist Christians are holding the Palestinians down, but let’s be fair. The Vatican is far from alone in having a problem with those of us who take God at His Word. As seen in the opening paragraphs of a NewsBusters story, there are people who believe the next great task for humanity is to rid itself of us, to “eradicate” fundamentalism:

Author and blogger Frank Schaeffer really, really doesn’t like what he calls “evangelical/fundamentalist” Christians. In the past, he’s suggested that their “hatemongering” was responsible for the “continuing ugliness of the response to President Obama.” And now, in a new blog on The Huffington Post, he’s calling for the “eradication” of fundamentalist Christianity.

“The next great task for the human race is to wean ourselves off literal interpretations of religion. We need to eradicate fundamentalism in all its forms,” Schaeffer wrote. “Atheism is no help,” he later added.

It is no surprise that he feels this way toward Christianity. After all, it flies in the face of liberal ideology, which promotes gay marriage and heterosexual cohabitation before marriage.

Right on cue, Schaeffer used the blog promote the gay agenda, beginning in the fifth paragraph. Killing two birds with one stone he attacked the Church in America and promoted the homosexual lifestyle. Schaeffer praised, “Those of us who have no problem with celebrating the fact that some people are created gay, or that other people live with a girlfriend or boyfriend because marriage isn’t always the best way to relate to a lover” as having a wider circle of acceptance.

Just look at all the chaos fundamentalist Christians are responsible for from Schaeffer’s perspective:

* Hatemongering – Even though we stand accused of being rigid in our adherence to the Word of God, we’re not, in the eyes of the world, when it comes to that whole ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ thing. (Matthew 19:19)
* President Obama’s sagging popularity – The president is pro-homosexual, pro-abortion and anti-Israel among other things, all of which flies in the face of our biblical beliefs. We react accordingly, which is a bad thing from the liberal’s perspective. If tomorrow we threw all of God’s precepts out the window, there would never be a liberal policy we didn’t love. This would be why people like Frank Schaeffer would like to see us thrown out the window (of an office on the top floor of a very tall building)!
* Sexual immorality remaining taboo – We just won’t let the world become Sodom and Gomorrah without a fight, perhaps because we remember what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis, chapter 19) and take the Lord at His Word, literally, when He says He set those cities forth as “an example” for us. (Jude 1:7)

The further we proceed into the last days, the more those of us who hold fast to a literal interpretation of Scripture and strive to live our lives accordingly are going to be subject to the criticisms and hatred of the world.

In the prophetic future, as we see in Revelation 12:17, Satan and his right-hand man, the Antichrist, are going to unleash their full fury on those who “keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

We seem to live in a time when everything that can go wrong has done so. Our run of bad luck reminds me of the play Pippin, in which King Charles proclaims, “It’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart.”

Bad luck can only occur for so long before the odds require it to change. If misfortune persists, there has to be some controlling factor that guides the events. We have been stricken with such frequency that it is long overdue for our nation to reflect on the nature of our problems. Consider the following examples:

1. We currently have the worst oil spill in our nation’s history. According to government estimates of daily flow figures, anywhere from 73.5 million to 126 million gallons gushed from the breached wellhead—whether that crude spilled into the water or was captured. In case you were wondering, like me, whether the oil might run out, there are still 2.1 billion gallons in the reservoir. The vast majority of the released oil is still in the Gulf. Even if the flow were stopped today, the consequences of the spill would continue to mount for years to come.

2. There has been a spate of negative weather events. Tennessee was hit with a massive amount of rainfall, shattering numerous all-time records. There was also a deluge in western Oklahoma, with Oklahoma City being the hardest hit. Last week, folks in Minnesota saw the most number of tornadoes they had ever seen in a single day: On June 17, there were 31 twisters, topping the old record of 27 set on June 16, 1992. And in Arkansas, just down the road from Terry and me, a flash flood killed more than 20 campers at a state park.

3. It is well known that our federal government is facing a host of debt problems. The financial trouble goes right to the bedrock of our nation. San Diego and Detroit are on opposite scales from each other. The first has an economy-based defense, tech manufacturing, and tourism, while the Second City is a rust-bowl city with heavy ties to the automobile industry. Both cities are on the verge of bankruptcy. San Diego is being weighed down by an under-funded retirement and health system. Detroit is literally rotting away. There are now 10,000 abandoned homes in Detroit that the city managers want to tear down and turn into empty lots.

4. Our foreign policy has become a slow-motion train wreck. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest in our nation’s history. European heads of state are starting to doubt America’s ability to be a global leader. Opposition to key aspects of U.S. foreign policy remains pervasive in the Muslim world. While America’s favorability rating in Egypt has dropped from 27 percent to 17 percent, nut jobs like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are able to travel the globe and make new friends simply because they are enemies of the U.S.

Commentators are now starting to say that Barack Obama’s presidency is looking much like the disastrous term experienced by Jimmy Carter. There is one big difference: Obama was a Jimmy Carter even before he took office. American voters knew his record before he took office.

Many prophecy students would cite our treatment of Israel as the key reason we are lately such a snake-bitten nation. They base this assessment on Genesis 12:1-3: “I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.” I generally agree, but I don’t think it is as automatic as some claim. In other words, I don’t believe that if our government does something on Monday, a calamity will necessarily strike us on Tuesday.

It’s hard to deal with a problem when you don’t know it exists. To the carnal mind, these four examples seem to have no connection to each other. Until enough people realize that there is a God with the power to grant and withdraw favors, the source of our “bad luck” will remain a mystery.

The current mindset in our nation is “wait until election day when we can throw the bums out and change our political course.” We just got done playing musical chairs by switching from Republicans to Democrats. Until our nation gets back to choosing Jesus as our spiritual leader, the snakes of misfortune will continue to bite.

06.22.10

What many people refuse to understand is that Muslims want to kill us just because we are non-Muslim. If we left their countries today and never set foot in them again, we would still be attacked. Our departures would change nothing, other than to embolden the terrorist to do even more.

NEW YORK — Admitted terrorist Faisal Shahzad was so eager to tell how he plotted to kill Americans in Times Square, he went to court with a prepared statement.

U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum refused to hear him read it Monday, instead challenging the Pakistan-born American citizen to just say “what happened.”

In an unapologetic, matter-of-fact courtroom colloquy that followed, Shahzad offered chilling details about how he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to build bombs, then returned to the U.S. to launch an attack that would avenge attacks on Muslims by U.S. forces overseas.

“One has to understand where I’m coming from,” he said in an unusual departure from tightly scripted guilty pleas, with his defense attorney and prosecutors sitting in silence in federal court in Manhattan. “I consider myself … a Muslim soldier.”

Shahzad, 30, admitted leaving an SUV rigged with a homemade bomb in bustling Times Squares on a warm night on May 1. The bomb failed to go off, and the Bridgeport, Conn., resident was arrested trying to leave the country on a Dubai-bound flight two days later.

Authorities say following his capture, Shahzad voluntarily started talking about the botched bombing right away — a pattern that continued in open court, where he agreed to plead guilty to 10 terrorism and weapons counts without the benefit of a plea deal and with certainty he’d face life in prison.

“I want to plead guilty, and I’m going to plead guilty 100 times over,” he said.

Until U.S. forces leave Muslim territory, he added, “we will be attacking U.S.”

Widely circulated snapshots of Shahzad — a U.S.-trained financial analyst and married father of two — show him with a neatly trimmed beard, all smiles and looking carefree behind sunglasses driving a car, or standing next to his American wife. When led into court on Monday, he had on a white skull cap and prisoner’s uniform, his beard shaggy and his demeanor full of pride and absent remorse.

Shahzad traced his plot to a 2009 trip to Pakistan that began only three months after he received his U.S. citizenship.

During the trip, he said he sought and received five days’ training in explosives from the Pakistani Taliban in the lawless Waziristan region before returning to the United States in February to pursue a one-man scheme to bring death and destruction to New York.

The indictment said he received $5,000 in cash on Feb. 25 from an unnamed coconspirator in Pakistan and $7,000 more on April 10, sent at the coconspirator’s direction. Shahzad said in court Monday that the Pakistani Taliban also gave him more than $4,000 when he left training camp.

He explained that he loaded his vehicle with three bomb components, hoping to set off a fertilizer-fueled bomb packed in a gun cabinet, a set of propane tanks and gas canisters rigged with fireworks to explode into a fireball. He also revealed he was carrying a folding assault rifle in a laptop computer case for “self-defense.”

Shahzad said he expected the bomb to begin going off after he lighted a fuse and waited between 2 1/2 minutes and five minutes for it to erupt.

“I was waiting to hear a sound, but I couldn’t hear any sound. … So I just walked to Grand Central (Terminal), and I went home,” he said.

Robert Spenser, director of Jihad Watch, speaks out on the root cause of honor killings.

The case in point is the “honor killing” of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez, a Canadian Muslim girl. According to The Globe and Mail, the girl’s father, 60-year-old Muhammad Parvez and her 29-year-old brother Waqas Parvez recently pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

The paper went on to say the teenage girl fought her parents for the right to wear Western clothing and refused to wear the “hijab” (Islamic head covering) they wanted her to wear. The girl wanted to apply for a part-time job against her father’s wishes and she ran away from home twice. Her father vowed he would kill her if she ever ran away again. He followed through on his threat, with the help of his son.

How on earth this is second degree murder, when it most certainly appears to be premeditated, first degree murder, is beyond me. Must have been a plea agreement.

“It’s a good thing that Aqsa Parvez’s father was convicted and will serve, along with her brother, a life sentence,” [Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch] remarks. “But it’s not enough because it is something that’s going to continue in Muslim communities in the United States and Canada until we confront the root of the problem.”

And the root of the problem, he says, is Islamic sharia law, which condones such honor killings. “This is something that the American press has gravely omitted in its coverage of such events in the United States and in Canada and elsewhere in the West,” says the Jihad Watch director. “But the unpleasant reality is that many Muslim countries — notably Syria and Jordan — actually have it on their books.”

Spencer refutes the claims by the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations that Aqsa’s murder was nothing more than an act of domestic violence that could have happened in any religion.

More typical behavior from our want-to-be emperor. Remember that in the language of this administration, “immigration reform” means illegal alien amnesty.

President Obama is refusing to secure the border until Congress reaches a breakthrough on comprehensive immigration reform, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl said at a recent town hall meeting.

The No. 2 Senate Republican, in a video clip posted on YouTube showing the senator speaking to a local Tea Party crowd on Friday, said the president told him during a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office that he was concerned he wouldn’t win GOP support on immigration legislation if he took care of border security first.

“The problem is, he said, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform,” Kyl said, as the crowd in the room gasped loudly. “In other words, they’re holding it hostage.”

The White House denied the claim on Monday. Spokesman Bill Burton and Communications
Director Dan Pfeiffer both said Kyl “knows” Obama did not make that comment to him in their meeting.

“The president didn’t say that and Senator Kyl knows it,” Pfeiffer said in a written statement. “There are more resources dedicated toward border security today than ever before, but, as the president has made clear, truly securing the border will require a comprehensive solution to our broken immigration system.”

Burton repeated the claim at the press briefing Monday afternoon.

But Kyl’s office stood by the senator’s account. Kyl spokesman Ryan Patmintra said, “There were two people in that meeting, and Dan Pfieffer was not one of them.” He said Pfeiffer’s call for comprehensive immigration legislation “only confirms” Kyl’s story.

And later, Kyl himself affirmed to Fox News the accuracy of his version: “I portrayed our conversation totally accurately … The president cannot say that what I said was incorrect.”

While Obama has pledged to send an influx of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, Kyl said in the clip that the president made clear to him that border security is just a political tool in the broader goal of passing an immigration package through Congress.

In the town hall meeting, Kyl said he was “not so sure” the president’s concern about GOP support was legitimate, but that regardless, the administration has an “obligation” to secure the border.

“They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with comprehensive immigration reform,” Kyl said. “They frankly don’t want to do it. They want to get something in return for doing their duty.”

I’d like to make several points about the article and the following photos.
Here is a photo from the November, 2006 edition of National Geographic, that depicts the skeleton of Lucy, the purported “missing link” in the evolution of ape to man:

Interesting, huh? A full skeleton. But look at the actual “data”, or in this case, the bones, they had to work with:

Notice how much of the top photo is artist conjecture. Is portraying a complete skeleton based on only having twenty percent of it, at best, good science? Is forensic science that good? It’s not like reconstructing a skeleton at a crime scene. We know what a modern person looks like, so filling in the missing pieces is so much easier. But in this case, we don’t have that information. Admittedly, having some of the long bones is helpful in determining height and stature, but 80% artist conjecture is not science.

Think about this folks. We are teaching an entire generation of children that this is fact, when in fact, if this information was presented in a trial, it is so flimsy that it would cause the case to be dismissed.

Let’s continue on.

In the article from Fox News, they discuss a new skeleton called Kadanuumuu, which means “big man” in the Afar language. Here is what is interesting about Kad; he predates Lucy by about 400,000 years and in the words of the projects lead author, Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, “this individual was fully bipedal and had the ability to walk almost like modern humans.” [emphasis mine]

Notice what he said; “had the ability to walk almost like modern humans”

I know people today who “walk almost like modern humans”, myself included. So what is the difference?

Here’s his skeleton:

Again, notice the lack of data, or bones. But also, once again, notice the presence of the long bones. A full skeleton would be mostly artist conjecture, but scientist most likely have enough evidence to determine his stature.

Scientists may have found the great, great, great, etc., grandfather of the famous fossil Lucy.

A new partial skeleton of an early hominid known as Australopithecus afarensis was discovered in a mud flat of the Afar region of Ethiopia.

Dated about 3.6 million years ago, the find is about 400,000 years older than the famous Lucy, which was among the earliest upright walking hominids, researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The bones indicate this ancestor also walked upright, but was considerably larger than Lucy, who stood about 3.5 feet tall. Because of his size — he would have stood more than 5 feet tall — the new specimen has been named “Kadanuumuu,” which means “big man” in the Afar language.

“This individual was fully bipedal and had the ability to walk almost like modern humans,” said lead author Yohannes Haile-Selassie of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

“As a result of this discovery, we can now confidently say that Lucy and her relatives were almost as proficient as we are walking on two legs, and that the elongation of our legs came earlier in our evolution than previously thought,” he said in a statement.

Australopithecus afarensis is the best-known direct early human ancestor. Until now, the only partial skeleton assigned to this species was Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old female discovered in 1974 by a team led by then Museum curator Dr. Donald Johanson.

“Ardi,” or Ardipithecus ramidus is a 4.4 million-year-old hominid species unveiled in October 2009 by a team that included Haile-Selassie, Lovejoy, and Museum scientists and associate researchers Dr. Linda Spurlock, Dr. Bruce Latimer and Dr. Scott Simpson. “Ardi” was named by the journal Science as breakthrough discovery of the year.

The find was made by an international team led by Haile-Selassie and Owen Lovejoy of the Cleveland museum. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Geographic Society.

One last comment. Even Fox News is guilty of portraying the “evolution” of ape to human as fact, when it has yet to be the least bit proven. The saga continues…

06.21.10

On Thursday evening, June 17th, members of Stand With Us, the pro-Israel student advocacy organization staged a raucous demonstration outside The House of the Lord Church on Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, as they confronted the allegations leveled against Israel in its role in the May 31st commando raid on the “Free Gaza Flotilla” ship, the Marvi Marmara. The former Turkish MP and IHH activist Ahmet Faruk Unsal who had been scheduled to speak was denied access to the USA, however Viva Palestina organizer Kevin Ovenden and filmmaker Lara Lee, who claim they were passengers on the ship, took the podium to spew forth invective against Israel for the attack that left nine Turkish terrorist nationals dead.

Sponsored by a litany of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas organizations such as Al-Awda-New York: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the Muslim American Society, American Muslims For Palestine, NYC Labor Against the War, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the Arab Muslim American Federation, Labor For Palestine, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, Action for a Progressive Pakistan, and the ANSWER Coalition among others, the speakers called for “an international war crimes” tribunal to be established in order to bring Israel to “justice” for what they perceive as an act of “piracy and murder”.

Approximately 40 member of Stand With Us and other concerned citizens stood directly across the street from the church holding aloft signs saying, “Humanitarian Aid Workers Don’t Carry Knives, Axes and Metal Bars”, “Israel: We Stand With You” and “Shame on Turkey” while chanting “Terrorists – Yes; Humanitarians – No”. Clearly, the implications of the demonstrators was that the Turkish sponsored flotilla, under the aegis of the IHH, which stands for the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, is not an Islamic charity but rather a group with direct links to terrorist organizations.

According to news reports, Turkish security forces, in 1998, raided the IHH’s headquarters in Istanbul and found weapons, explosives, instructions for making IEDs and a flag with a jihad message. As former French counter-terrorism magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, who was involved in the raid, has explained: “It was clearly proven that some of the NGO’s work was not charity. It was to provide a facade for moving funds, weapons and mujahedeen to and from Bosnia and Afghanistan.”

The IHH is also a member of the Saudi-based umbrella organization, the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir), led by Sheikh Yusuf Quaradawi, who is considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Every year the Union of Good, whose top officials include Hamas members, channels millions of dollars to Hamas-controlled organizations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Avi Posnick, the local chapter leader of Stand With Us said, “We are here today to counter the bald faced lies and egregious propaganda that are being hurled against Israel inside this church. Based on video and personal testimonies, Israel has been exonerated from any wrongdoing but these speakers, who allege to be humanitarians, but are just the opposite; choose not to look at the truth. Israel did not randomly kill “innocent” people aboard the Marvi Marmara but rather defended herself against terrorists with the intent to kill Israeli commandos and with the intent of smuggling weapons to Hamas forces in Gaza.”

Referencing a June 15th article by Jerusalem Post reporter Caroline Glick in which she wrote: “Led by US President Barack Obama, the West has cast its lot with Hamas against Israel. It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit. Obama’s friends, former Weatherman Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is former US senator from South Dakota James Abourezk. All of these people have open lines of communication not only to the Obama White House, but to Obama himself”, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind who represents the 48th assembly district in Boro Park and was present at the demonstration said, “I am not at all surprised. Obama has created a political atmosphere that not only endangers Israel but the entire Western world.”

“My question is: Where are all the Zionist organizations? Where are all the pulpit rabbis? Why aren’t they here today and why don’t we hear their collective voices of outrage and indignation against the Obama administration’s pressure on Israel to empanel an investigative committee to find out what really happened on the Marvi Marmara, when we all know that the State of Israel was being attacked by terrorists? Why isn’t the Zionist leadership, especially here in New York organizing rallies and demonstrations against the nefarious policies of this administration as it pertains to Israel?” Assemblyman Hikind declared.

Citing the abject silence on the part of his colleagues in the Democratic party, Hikind intoned, “We can expect little or nothing in terms of strong opposition to Obama’s Middle East agenda from our elected officials in the Democratic party. Their reluctance to voice their concern about Israel’s predicament speaks volumes about their allegiance to partisan politics and their repudiation of the concerns of their constituencies.”

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Fern Sidman holds a B.A, in political science from Brooklyn College. She was the educational coordinator for the Betar Youth Movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was national director of the Jewish Defense League from 1983-1985. She was a researcher for several books written by Rabbi Meir Kahane, ZTK”L. She was the managing editor of the publication entitled, The Voice of Judea, and is a regular contributor to its web site. She is currently a writer and journalist living in New York City. Her articles have appeared in The Jewish Press, The Jewish Advocate, The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, and numerous Jewish and general web sites including, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Pipes and Michael Freund.
We are delighted to have Ms. Sidman as a regular contributor to the Jesus is Lord, A Worshipping Christian’s Blog.

06.18.10

None of this would be necessary if the federal government would just uphold the laws it has sworn to obey.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer expressed outrage Thursday over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments that the Obama administration will sue over Arizona’s controversial immigration law — and Brewer said she’s ready for a fight.

Clinton said in an interview with a TV station in Ecuador that the Obama administration “will be bringing” suit against Arizona for its immigration law, though the Justice Department for weeks has said that the issue is still under review.

“What a disappointment,” Brewer told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren on Thursday, saying she was shocked the administration would make such an announcement on foreign TV without giving Arizona officials the news first. Her office hadn’t heard from the administration as of Thursday evening.

“We are not going to back away from this issue,” Brewer said. “We are going to pursue it, we’re going to be very aggressive,” Brewer said. “We’ll meet them in court … And we will win.”

She added: “The population of America agrees with Arizona.”

In a clip of the interview posted on a conservative blog, Clinton was asked how the Obama administration was handling the debate over the law.

“President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy. And the Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act,” the secretary of state responded, before calling for comprehensive immigration reform.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both criticized the Arizona law, but the administration has maintained that its attorneys are reviewing the legislation to determine the next step.

06.17.10

Israeli Prime Minister Benjami Netanyahu said to his people on Monday (6-14-10), “Be prepared for difficult days.” Amen to that!

Currently, as though driven to near insanity, Israel’s enemies bent on her destruction are feverishly working at achieving their goal. Netanyahu put it like this:

“Dark forces from the Middle Ages are raging against us. I have received calls from concerned officials in the Balkans and Eastern Europe who are very worried about these developments.”

And…

“The flotilla to Gaza was not a one-time thing. We find ourselves in the midst of a difficult and continuous battle against the State of Israel. The flood of hate is being led by Israel’s enemies all over the world.

They are trying to pinch us with the metal pinchers of missiles and terror, and revoke Israel’s right to defend itself as well as the rights of IDF soldiers to protect their own lives.”

The prophesied time of Jacob’s trouble is fast approaching Israel it appears, Netanyahu correctly grasping that “dark forces” are raging against the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. On the upside, however, much as the troubling signs appearing in the world from the perspective of the Church remind us that our redemption draweth nigh, Israel has the promise of God on its side that its redemption is drawing near as well, although that isn’t something Israel, as a nation, is yet ready to accept. Let’s look at some scripture and gain some insight into where all of the anti-semitic hatred rearing its evil head at this hour is leading to.

Things to come

The current atmosphere in the tumultuous Middle East is only going to get worse for a time as many end times battles remain to be fought in the region prior to Israel’s redemption occurring, which will take place at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Even though this is true, much having to occur before things get markedly better for Israel, a brighter day is coming into view on the prophetic horizon and more so, it seems, with every passing day.

Jeremiah 30:7 foretells that very difficult days lie ahead for Israel, just as their prime minister has said:

Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.

How will things progress beyond the stressful environment Israel is presently living under until a time of trouble unlike any before it will beset the Jewish people? As those of us familiar with bible prophecy know, tensions like those presently visible in the Middle East are eventually going to provide the prophesied Antichrist with an opportunity to gain prominence on the world stage, his advent in the aftermath of the Rapture of the Church opening the seven-year Tribulation Period.

Initially seeming to be a friend of Israel, the Antichrist will confirm a seven-year covenant that will intrigue the world, presumably a peace agreement that will offer Israel the promise of peace and safety, but halfway through the seven-year covenant, the Antichrist’s true nature will be revealed and he will set his sights against Israel and its people in the Great Tribulation – the final three and a half years of the seven-year Tribulation Period to come.

Faced with the threat of destruction at the hands of another Hitler-like enemy seeking to wipe them from the face of the earth, Israel will come to call upon Jesus Christ at the height of the Antichrist’s satanically empowered rage against them, accepting Him as their Messiah at long last. This will set the stage for the return of Jesus Christ at Armageddon, after which the Jewish people will at last know peace.

Jeremiah 30:8-9:

For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him: But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.

The Son of David, Jesus Christ, is He who is going to break the yoke of the Antichrist from off Israel’s neck (Revelation 19:19-20) and He who is spoken of as their king in the preceding passage.

While a medieval kind of evil is gathering against Israel, at least from the perspective of their current leader, better and brighter days do lie ahead – days of complete victory for Israel. We have God’s sure word on it!

Speaking of Christ’s kingdom to come and Israel’s bright and peaceful future, the prophet Isaiah wrote, in Isaiah 9:7:

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.

Woe unto the enemies of Israel! While they are gathering like a pack of hungry wolves thirsty for Israel’s blood, their day is coming and when it arrives? They are going to learn the hard way that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! (Hebrews 10:31)

“You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”
– Rahm Emanuel, Obama chief of staff

President Obama is drawing bipartisan criticism for using the BP oil spill to revive an energy regulation bill that’s been on the back burner since last year, with lawmakers saying the so-called “cap-and-trade” package does nothing to stop the leak or mitigate the damage.

Obama, trying to take control of a crisis that has slowly eroded support for his administration, addressed the nation from the Oval Office Tuesday night to rally support for his efforts to tackle the spill. He pointed to the relief efforts already underway and said the government would hold BP responsible. But later in his 18-minute speech, he turned to focus on the need to “seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels” and tout Democrats’ climate legislation.

“We can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy, because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security and our environment are far greater,” Obama said in the first Oval Office address of his presidency.

While the president was taking the long view, lawmakers said that’s not the kind of response Gulf residents suffering immediate economic and environmental damage need.

“If my house is on fire, I don’t need the fire chief telling me I should not have built the house out of wood. I need somebody to put the fire out,” Republican Alabama Gov. Bob Riley told Fox News on Wednesday. “We have a crisis here. … Last night, we were going through again the same type of rhetorical persuasion that the president is very good at, but not now.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was quoted by The San Francisco Chronicle saying, “the climate bill isn’t going to stop the oil leak.” Stopping the leak should come first, she said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he agrees with Feinstein and that the energy policy proposed by Obama will not help Gulf residents in the near-term.

“What they’re doing here in effect is holding the Gulf hostage to a national energy tax,” he told Fox News.

The speech came 57 days after the April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and sparked the crisis, in which millions of gallons of oil already have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. The speech also served as a prelude to Obama’s meeting Wednesday with BP executives at the White House. Obama plans to press executives to set up an escrow account to pay economic damages to Gulf residents.

In his speech, Obama called on all Americans to contribute to “a new future that will benefit all of us.” He used similar language to kick-start action on his health care overhaul last year.

“As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of good, middle-class jobs, but only if we accelerate that transition,” Obama said. “Only if we seize the moment. And only if we rally together and act as one nation — workers and entrepreneurs; scientists and citizens; the public and private sectors.”

A common tactic of Muslim men, when facing custody battles, is to lure the mother and child back to their native Muslim country, where women have few if any rights. This allows the man to pretty much take the child away from the mother. The courts, in those countries, are almost never sympathetic to the mother, or grant custody of the child to her.

EXCLUSIVE: Yazmin Maribel Bautista wants desperately to get out of Bahrain, but she says she won’t return home to the U.S. without her 5-year-old daughter — and that’s something her ex-husband says will never happen.

Bautista, 43, of Phoenix, is locked in a bitter child custody dispute with her 28-year-old ex-husband, Sadiq Jaffar Al-Saffar, over their daughter Fatima, who was born in 2004 when her parents lived in Arizona.

Fatima wasn’t even 2 years old when her father left her mother and went home to his native Bahrain, where he got engaged to a much younger woman. But despite having been abandoned, Bautista traveled to visit with her ex-husband in Bahrain last year, lured by the promise of a new job and a chance for her daughter to spend time with her father — an information technology worker — in his native country.

But now that his ex-wife and daughter are in Bahrain, Al-Saffar has filed for custody of the little girl — and a judge in the small Mideast country has ruled that the little girl, a native-born American, cannot go home with her mom.

Bautista, who also has a son from a previous relationship, says she and Fatima were blocked from leaving Bahrain on two occasions last year — on Sept. 26 and Oct. 19. On one occasion, she said, officials from the U.S. Embassy there advised her to speak with a judge after clearing immigration.

“Once you talk to him, you and Fatima can go your way,” Bautista recalled the embassy official saying.

But “[t]he judge told me Fatima could not leave Bahrain because her father did not want her to leave,” Bautista says. “They told me, ‘If you want to leave, you can leave. But the girl stays.’ Obviously, I wasn’t going to leave my baby.”

That “nightmare,” as Bautista calls it, occurred nine months ago, and it caught the eye of her senator, John McCain, who sent a letter in January to Bahraini Ambassador Houde Erza Ebrahim Nonoo, urging her to “expeditiously resolve” the custody dispute and allow Bautista and Fatima to return home. State Department officials in Washington also are closely following the case.

Alongside her daughter, who she said cries constantly and has too many “blue days” away from home, a broke, unemployed and nearly broken Bautista said in an interview that she continues to stay with friends in Bahrain while awaiting her next court date on June 23. That’s when witnesses will be asked to testify on her competency as a mother, she said.

“Fatima is not the same little girl she was when she arrived in Bahrain,” Bautista said. “She has crying spells. She misses home, she misses her brother. That’s where our home is — our home is in Arizona.”

Al-Saffar, meanwhile, accused Bautista of not adhering to their custodial arrangement, which grants him custody of Fatima three days a week. He is now seeking full custody of the little girl, he told FoxNews.com.

“What she’s trying to do is take my daughter back to Phoenix so I cannot see her,” Al-Saffar said. “She just wants to take my daughter and leave. She’s completely abandoning me from my daughter.”

Al-Saffar said he hasn’t seen Fatima for more than a month, and the ongoing turmoil is “not something that’s good” for his daughter. He claims Bautista tried to leave the country without his knowledge after he arranged a teaching job for her last August.

“She did not even call me to let me say goodbye to my daughter,” Al-Saffar said. “I did not even know she was taking my daughter and actually leaving.”

Al-Saffar said he learned of Bautista’s attempt to leave the country only because he received an e-mail notification related to the airline ticket he purchased for her.

“If she were to have left, I would have never seen my daughter again,” he said. “I will never get a visa.”

Al-Saffar denied allegations that he lured his ex-wife to Bahrain under the pretense of setting her up with a job and a place to stay in his family’s residence with the intention of trapping her there.

“I do confirm that this is not true,” he said. “Why would I wait until the last minute?”

Bautista said she and Al-Saffar met in early 2004 at a café in Tempe, Ariz. She said Al-Saffar, a student at Arizona State University, told one of her friends that he was interested in her. On May 27, 2004, they married in a civil court ceremony. Bautista was five-months pregnant at the time, she said.

“We had good times at the beginning,” she said. “We tried to have a happy life; to have a happy relationship.”

She said she supported the family while her husband studied computer engineering. Fatima was born on Oct. 14, 2004, just months before Al-Saffar’s graduation.

The first sign of trouble came when Al-Saffar’s father came to visit from Bahrain, Bautista said. She said her husband’s family was unaware that the two had married and that they had a baby daughter.

“I really don’t know what my husband told his father at the time, but I told him, ‘We are a family now, we have Fatima,'” she said. “He was hiding Fatima from [his family] as well. I wanted him to tell his family that he’s a married man with a daughter.”

Al-Saffar traveled to Bahrain in January 2005, only to return to Phoenix in April, when he got a job working at an airline. He returned to Bahrain in September 2005, Bautista said. It was at the airport, she says, that she found out it was the beginning of the end.

“He told me, ‘By the way, I am not coming back, I am staying in Bahrain,'” she said. “I asked him to please stay until her first birthday, but he said, ‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.'”

Aside from sporadic phone calls, Bautista said she did not hear from Al-Saffar again until February 2006, when he returned to Phoenix to spend two weeks with his sister. She said Al-Saffar declined to take her and Fatima back to Bahrain, and she said her sister-in-law told her she would never be part of their Muslim family.

Al-Saffar left Arizona again and returned in September 2006 — this time as a newly engaged man. At the time, Bautista said she no idea that her husband had found love elsewhere.

“He used my house like a hotel, he slept there but spent all his time with his friends,” she said. “He was acting different, so I asked him, ‘Do you have somebody else?'”

Al-Saffar told FoxNews.com he became engaged to his second wife in early 2006 but waited until 2008 to remarry in Bahrain. Bautista says Al-Saffar admitted to marrying someone else as early as April 2006.

“She is a Muslim and, of course, she’s younger,” Bautista said of Al-Saffar’s 24-year-old wife. “He actually took me for a ride. Was he planning this from the beginning? Probably — I believe it was a game to him. ”

Bautista filed for divorce in 2008 and, by last August, the couple had been working on a plan to unite Fatima with her father and to arrange a job for Bautista, who was unemployed at the time. On the promise of an apartment, a job and other amenities, Bautista agreed to go to Bahrain to “see how it was,” she said.

“I left my family, my friends and my son to give it a try, to bring Fatima to her father,” she said. “I was very naïve, yes, I know. And, like an idiot, I went back to Bahrain with my daughter.”

Once at the Al-Saffar home, Bautista said her ex-husband’s relatives told her she was not to be alone in the same room with Al-Saffar, and they accused her of trying to ruin his new marriage.

“They weren’t accepting of me,” she said. “They wanted to take my daughter from me.”

The hostile living situation ultimately drove her to live in a hotel, and eventually in a homeless shelter when funds ran dry.

“That was the most depressing thing that I’ve gone through,” Bautista said. “I had never set foot in a shelter before.”

Bautista’s plight caught McCain’s attention in January, when he wrote to Bahrain’s ambassador calling for “urgent personal attention” to the matter.

“Ms. Bautista contends that she, not Mr. Al-Saffar, is the legal custodian of their daughter,” McCain’s letter read. “She states that she was granted both a legal divorce from Mr. Al-Saffar and sole custody of Fatima by the Superior Court of Arizona in the United States of America. Ms. Bautista further notes that Mr. Al-Saffar signed legal documentation acknowledging that he was aware of said legal proceedings in Arizona and that he agreed to submit to the court’s jurisdiction.”

Through a spokeswoman, McCain declined comment for this article, including whether embassy officials had responded to his inquiry.

Sahar Hakeem, Ambassador Nonoo’s secretary, said the ambassador was out of the country due to a medical issue and was unreachable. Hakeem had told FoxNews.com on Tuesday that “no one” in the embassy in Washington was aware of Bautista’s case.

Andy Laine, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of State, said the agency and the U.S. Embassy in Manama were “closely” following the case.

“The U.S. Embassy in Manama continues to raise this case with the government of Bahrain to ensure it receives the attention it deserves,” Laine wrote FoxNews.com.

Meanwhile, Edgar Bautista, Yazmin Bautista’s 24-year-old son, is hopeful he will soon be reunited with his mother and half-sister. They have not spoken in more than two weeks, he said.

“It’s kind of hard to keep in touch,” he told FoxNews.com. “I just want my mom and my sister to come back home to Phoenix, to just come back to their regular lives and more forward.”